The ancient Egyptians believed that it was important to record and communicate information about religion and government.The written language in ancient Egypt was hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics are hundreds of images put together forming the Egyptian language. This used to be the most famous language. However, there are two other scripts. One of them is called Hieratic. It's formed from hieroglyphics. Pictures were reduced to lines and squiggles to make writing easier and quicker. The other form of writing is Demotic. This version of Egyptian language was based on phonetics. Demotic means "the peoples' writing". It got this name because everyone could read and write it easily.
Pharaoh's names in hieroglyphics
In the Egyptian writing system there are about seven hundred letters. This is very interesting because in our alphabet there are only twenty-six letters, so we thought this was an extremely interesting fact.
In temples pharoahs wrote on the walls with heiroglyphics and drew to show there respect for the dieties since this is the house of the gods. The preists in the temple were scribes and they performed rituals to keep the dieties happy.
The goverment also used heiroglyphics to keep records of the past years like how much grain or how many animals were collected in the past year in taxes. Goverment officials were scribes in higher positions.
In the military people used heiroglyphics to communicate with
each other. Military leaders were first trained as scribes to be able to read messages.
The Egyptians who wrote were called scribes. To learn how to write, the scribes had to go to scribe school. Students in scribe school had many things to learn. It was important for scribes to learn how to record information correctly.Scribes spent hours copying hundreds of signs until they could make them well enough to please their teachers. They wrote on papyrus. Papyrus is old pieces of pottery or flakes of lime stone. Today we use pencils and pens; the Egyptians used reed brushes dipped in ink. Writing was used in scribe school, in the fields, in tombs, in temples, in the army, and in the goverment.
Students and thier teacher in scribe school.
Reed Brushes...They used these to write.
When scribes would write, they would write everything! Although hieroglyphics looked pretty, they took a long time to create on papyrus scrolls. Scribes would then use Demotic system of writing because it took less time to write. Scribes would record information about people, places, and records about everything.
There are a lot of differences between Egyptians way of writing and out way of writing. We use pens and pencils when we write. Egyptians would use reed brushes dipped in ink. We write on paper made from trees and Egyptians would use papyrus scrolls made from reed plants. We write in the english language and Egyptians would write in heiroglyphics.
Vocabulary
Papyrus- a reed plant that grows along the shorses of the nile river and is used to make scrolls.
Hieratic- Egyptian system of writing that came after hireoglyphics.
Demotic- system of writing used later in ancient egypt. It was faster to write down information. It came after
Scribes- people who went to school to learn how to write to keep information offical a scribe the to be an offical your father had to be a scribe and his father and so on thoth the wisdom god the god of the moon the god who made numbers and writing
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ERIN T ,ELAINE P , MALLORY O ,JULIE S , SARAH S